Oneiromancy
Divination from dreams, which many cultures have treated as messages from gods, ancestors or the self.
Also: dream interpretation, dream books, Oneirocritica, dream incubation
Oneiromancy is the reading of dreams as signs. Mesopotamian scribes kept dream omen lists, and an Egyptian dream book on papyrus dates from about 1275 BCE. Greek temples of Asclepius offered incubation, in which a visitor slept in the sanctuary hoping for a healing dream. In the second century CE Artemidorus of Daldis wrote the Oneirocritica, the largest surviving ancient guide, which argued that the same dream means different things for different dreamers. Islamic scholars produced their own dream manuals, and Indigenous cultures from Australia to the Americas treat dreaming as a route to knowledge. Freud and Jung offered modern theories, and neuroscientists see dreams as products of sleeping brain activity.